Meta has announced that services on its Facebook and Instagram platforms have been restored following a period of widespread disruption, during which over half a million users encountered difficulties. Many users reported being unexpectedly logged out of the social media platforms and encountering difficulties when attempting to log back in.
According to reports from DownDetector, a website that tracks internet service interruptions, over 500,000 complaints were registered by Facebook users in the United States, along with more than 70,000 complaints from Instagram users as of approximately 10:30 a.m. Eastern Time on Tuesday. The most commonly reported issues centered around logging into the Facebook app and encountering problems with the Instagram app.
In a statement on Tuesday, a spokesperson for Meta acknowledged that a technical problem had led to difficulties accessing certain services earlier in the day. They assured that efforts were promptly made to resolve the issue for all affected individuals and extended apologies for any inconvenience caused.
According to DownDetector, Facebook users worldwide reported experiencing login issues, spanning from Egypt to Oklahoma. Concerns arose on social media as some users expressed worries about potential hacking incidents, as they found themselves unexpectedly logged out of the service and unable to regain access using their passwords.
NetBlocks, a global internet monitoring organization, reported on Tuesday that Meta platforms, including Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, and Threads, are currently experiencing outages related to login sessions across multiple countries. These incidents are not linked to country-level internet disruptions or filtering.
Additionally, Meta Quest’s artificial reality headsets were also affected, as reported by the tech site 9to5Mac. However, WhatsApp, another platform owned by Meta, appeared to be unaffected by the outage.
NetBlocks director of research, Isik Mater, described the issue as a “major outage incident” in a statement made during the service interruption. Notably, even Meta’s official status page displayed a status of ‘Unknown’ across all platforms at the time.